If Life Gives You…

The story of our adventures on Dragon Island has just launched into the world and I’m celebrating by making lemon and strawberry cupcakes.

I love lemons. There’s a saying: ‘If life gives you lemons, make lemonade,’ which means if life gives you something good you should share it with as many people as possible.

This recipe is a good way of sharing.

You will need:

One author

One lemon tree

150g butter

150g caster sugar

3 eggs

150g self-raising flour

100g strawberries

Cupcake cases

One pirate crewmate who’s good at icing cakes

First, get your author to write an account of your heroic exploits. You may need to threaten her with a cutlass – authors are notoriously lazy.

Next, buy a lemon tree and tend it carefully, keeping it out of the way of ship’s cats, nosey pirates and baby dragons. By the time your author has written your book, you should have some lovely sunny lemons.

Grow or pillage your strawberries. I grew these in some barrels on deck.

Now you are ready to make your cakes. Pre-heat your ship’s cooking fire (or your oven at home) to 200 degrees centipede (or possibly centigrade – you may want to enlist the help of an adult pirate for this bit) and set out 12 paper cake cases. Beat the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon, or a wooden leg if you have one. Then beat in the eggs and the juice of one freshly-picked lemon. Mix in the flour. You can add the grated rind of the lemon if you like. Half fill your cake cases, then push a couple of chopped strawberries into each and top up with more cake mixture.

Bake for 20 minutes or until they’re risen and as gold as the sand on a treasure island.

Let the cakes cool, then get your pirate crewmate who’s good at icing to ice them for you.